Summer is here and for most of us, it’s the best season of the year. Although, summer has its temptations. The temptations of 3-day weekends, clocking out early and even cases of impromptu hooky. And who can blame us? Summer is only 13 weeks long! You can’t let summer pass you by without getting outside. This month in Tech Edge, we are going to go over some of the best Apps and tools for the creative professional when you are on the go. These Apps may help you out when you out of the office and enjoying the weather. These Apps and tools hopefully won’t only help you as a creative professional, but as someone trying to make the most of summer.
Waze
It is often said that 90% of success is just showing up. Waze can help you show up, and much more. Waze is a GPS App that allows users to report traffic conditions to other Waze users in real time. So imagine if your GPS had real time updates from all the other drivers on the road. This technology was so impressive to Google, that last year, they purchased Waze for nearly a billion dollars. What makes Waze so special is someone 10 miles ahead of you can report traffic to your map. Waze will take that traffic information and re-calculate your route based on this new information. If there is a more time efficient route instead of the one Waze originally put you on, you will be offered an alternative route. In other words, Waze will adapt to the changing conditions on the road.
Waze users (or “Wazers” as they are known) can report road debris, vicious pot-holes, disabled vehicles and even speed traps. Waze calculates its routes for you with traffic factored into travel time. Perfect for avoiding traffic altogether. There have been many times where I have been in traffic on the highway, and Waze would offer a route that takes me off the highway and brings me back on after the traffic is cleared. It’s an amazing App and if you don’t have it, get it. It’s free, and it will make your summer excursions much more organized.
LogMeIn
LogMeIn can help you in so many aspects of your life. What LogMeIn does is offer remote desktop support to your computer. So what does that mean? Imagine if you are away for the weekend and you were diligent enough to bring your laptop, but your client needs a file stored somewhere on a computer back at the office. They want you to email that one teeny, tiny file…..but its back at the office. Do you go all the way back? Not if you are using LogMeIn. If your computer in the office is online, and you can get online where ever you are vacationing, you can simply log into the computer remotely and use it as simply as if you were in front of it. You can access that file and email it.
LogMeIn can enable to you help someone without getting up and leaving the office. Do you have a technologically challenged relative that always leans on you for tech support, but they live an hour away? Set them up on LogMeIn and you can fix them at a moment’s notice. Conversely, if you are the technologically challenged relative, you can get people to help you with much less resistance if you offer to let them remote into your computer. With more and more software companies leaning toward remote desktop support, you may find yourself already a recipient of remote desktop support. But it’s out there for your use as well, and in non-commercial situations, it’s often free.
There are many alternatives out there for remote desktop Apps and software and why LogMeIn is more impressive is it keeps a database of your computers and you can jump on any one of them at any time, and it also will enable you to log in after a reboot. There are other Apps and tools out there that will let you log in remotely, but many do not enable you to log right back in easily after a reboot.
ColorStrokes
ColorStrokes is a photo editing App that is usually under $5 on the App store. With it being on the App store for not much money, do not expect something as in depth as Photoshop. Can what you can expect is a fun, breezy, easy to use photo editor that gives you some beautiful results without much effort.
ColorStrokes makes things like secondary color correction easy. When you import your photo into ColorStrokes, it brings it in black and white and you re-touch the color from there. You can easily re-apply any color or change the color, apply masks and correct around those masks. Its slick and simple user interface is really the selling point. Missing though are the abilities to edit multiple photos at once. You have to work on one photo at a time. This is likely due to the social media aspect of this App. There are hopes of that being added but that functionality is not there. But currently there is also functionality to send to more advanced photo editing software. And for photo file formats, they cover JPEG, TIFF, RAW, and PNG.
Once you have edited your image, you can email it out or share it with all the usual suspects in social media or even send it out to get printed. Perfect for the creative professional who is trying to maintain their creative credibility with stunning photos, while keeping the family up to date on how their vacation is going.
Steve McGrath is a Broadcast Sales Engineer for HB Communications. He has worked with NBC, ABC, CBS, NESN, NECN, Fox, ESPN, Pentagon, Powderhouse and many others. You can reach him at Steve.McGrath@HBCommunications.com. Learn more, visit www.HBCommunications.com.